kanye remixes

hey kids, just came upon a post on The Mixtape with some mp3s off the kanye remixtape by Benzi and Plain Pat, including Diplo's remix of "Flashing Lights". just thought you might want to take a look and a listen.

New Doom

Hot Biscuits has posted an mp3 of the new MF Doom track. You know what to do. Looking out for Born Like This. Still waiting for GhostDoom. The track is called "Ballskin". Sounds delicious.

New Lily Allen

This is the video for the new Lily Allen single "The Fear". New ablum drops in February. Not only is she cute 'n spunky (which, on the British scale, puts her in like the top second percentile of the local population), but her music is entertaining and nifty. I'm not doing too good a job of arguing her credibility, so just watch her.

Also, go ahead and download the mp3 at Fluxblog. You know you'll want to hear this again in the next day or two.

Songs For The New Industrial State

The new re-issue from Light In The Attic. After a spell in Canada's jazz explosion of the '50s and hanging out in England when it was swinging, the orchestral popster Doug Randle came back to Canada to make this 1971 album, just now available in the US after many years where it was not.

Doug Randle - Coloured Plastics

Well Why Don't We Just Quit?

Giving up is hard to do. Mainstream Isn't So Bad...Is It? just posted a mighty fine Gladys Knight and the Pips cover by the immortal (and very tragically dead) Donny Hathaway.

Donny Hathaway - Giving Up

Lil' Wayne and Pharrell?...Yes?

New post on Mixtape Maestro has a new collabo between NO's favorite superstar and VB's own ultracultural vampire. How can you say no?

Lil' Wayne ft Pharrell - Yes

Steinski the Great

In the interests of navel-gazery and material-recyclage, I'm going to take some time to go into more detail about my favorite ablbums of 2008. You can expect to see more whenever, you know, I have nothing to actually write about. Today we look at my number 1 spot, Steinski's What Does It All Mean? Steinski is a pioneer of hip-hop pastiche, without whom we probably wouldn't have the work of DJ Shadow, Cut Chemist, Prince Paul, Coldcut, or Girl Talk as we know it. His funky musical mosaics have circulated through the underground mainly through bootlegs, as they are so riddled with copyrighted material that commercial release would just be begging for a lawsuit. Luckily, that is exactly the stock in trade of the heroic, aptly named activist label Illegal Art, who compiled all of Steinski's legendary tracks along with a spectacular mix he made for Solid Steel, Coldcut's venerable radio program. Read more on Wikipedia (as if I had to tell you that) or check out his nifty interview on AV Club. Also, here is the blurb I wrote for Port Folio. I'll leave you with some instructive mp3s courtesy of Brooklyn Vegan. Please do not download these whilst eating meat in New York City.

Lesson 1: The Payoff Mix
Lesson 2: The James Brown Mix
Lesson 3: The History of Hip Hop

The Only Praise I Will Ever Give to...(distracting cough, ahem)...Moby

Yeah, I'm not a big fan of Moby, but sometimes we have to give props to canonized historical precedents. Good grief, why can't I have a normal dog like everybody else? Anyyaw, I've recently been rewatching the awesome cinematic Steve Coogan vehicle/account of a widely influential music scene "24 Hour Party People", as well as the well-researched and entertaining vh1 documentary mini-series "The Drug Years". These pieces among others taught me that the soundtrack to indicate the rise of ecstacy culture is Moby's "Go". It's a pretty great track, so take a look at it:



Believe me, it is more amazing with filmatism and context. But why is this one such an anthemic representation? You can usually trace these questions to samples. "Go" makes particularly good use of the theme to Twin Peaks:



That slice of transcendence was composed by frequent David Lynch collaborator Angelo Badalamenti. He is one of the finest, most visceral composers for film today, and he and Lynch have some kind of mind meld that produces extravagant new scary worlds of sound and vision. His masterpiece was the score to a very maligned Lynch movie that I love, Fire Walk With Me.

Angelo Badalamenti - Fire Walk With Me

Star Time

It is December 25, and today we celebrate the life of a special man named James Brown. The Godfather of Soul danced off this mortal coil two years ago today, leaving behind the most sampled catalog in history and the very foundation of modern music. Have some.

Lesson 2 (James Brown Mix) by Steinski
Papa's Got A Brand New Bag
Night Train
Funky Drummer
Cold Sweat
Funky President